A teenage Mormon girl finds that her house is haunted by the ghost of Joseph Smith's wife. A woman copes with her sexual relationship after learning her husband is gay. A college instructor confronts his own racism. A plastic surgeon discovers a new life form. God's wives fight for supremacy amongst themselves. These stories show the expanding variety of topics developed in the burgeoning field of Mormon literature.

Eerie, erotic, and magical, this book of loosely connected stories delves deep inside the consciousness of American Mormons. Set mostly in the South, Townsend's tales feature Mormons with a lot on their minds: environmental collapse, church politics, racism, and homophobia. But mostly they think about transgressing the church's restrictions on sexuality. "She felt guilty for sinning," Townsend (himself a Mormon) writes of one character, "but there was something exciting about it, too."Read more